A critical look at the new Mac Pro

A graphics pro breaks down Apple's new machine.

Hell finally froze over yesterday and Apple announced a new Mac Pro at WWDC. At first glance, the new machine was as mysterious as it was terrifying to me and many other creative pros who have been waiting for ages for this thing to drop. But now that Apple has a full site page for the new machine and I’ve gotten some info from people familiar with its internals and with OS X 10.9, the Mac Pro has become less of a mystery.

But that’s also what’s freaking us out.

The design

At 6.6" × 9.9" for its cylindrical stretched aluminum case, the new Mac Pro is tiny, and no other workstation-class Xeon desktop with a discrete workstation GPU—or two, in this case—looks anything like it. You get the feeling that the designers sat around coming up with ideas for the new Mac Pro and said, “If Darth Vader edited video, what would his computer look like?” Well... it would probably look like this:

If you haven’t seen the inside already, it’s a truly amazing bit of engineering, organized in a tube-like shape with a triangular arrangement of the motherboard elements along the exterior walls of the “thermal core,” a unibody-like heatsink that draws heat away from the GPU, CPU, and memory:

The Mac Pro 2013 interiors arranged around the thermal core.

Even more unusually, the machine has only one (1!) fan that cools everything, wind-tunnel style:

So the Mac Pro will, I suspect, be a ridiculously quiet workstation as well. This is Apple engineering at its best, and I won’t have any concerns about using this for long sessions of V-Ray rendering or ZBrush sculpting. Detractors will say it’s going to overheat if you do anything serious, but Apple knows these things need to run around the clock for days on end. It didn’t put a dual workstation GPU in there and expect people not to use it extensively. More about that further on.

The new Mac Pro makes the previous generation look (thankfully) as outdated as it should, given that the machine it’s replacing uses technology from 2010. All the expected modern technologies are here, plus some that will put the new machine ahead of many current competing workstations: dual Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 1.4, Thunderbolt 2.0 with DisplayPort 1.2 support for up to three 4K displays, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, 1866MHz ECC RAM, PCIe-based flash storage, and dual AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 6GB of VRAM. The addition of WiFi as standard is a nice addition, but it’s kind of a gimme considering the machine's lack of upgradeability.

Judging by the animation on Apple’s site, the RAM also appears to be easily user-replaceable:

It only has four slots though, so expect to pay a lot for configurations over 16GB, thanks to the much higher cost of 8GB+ DIMMs.

Apple opted to build in PCIe-based flash storage, and it appears to be on a daughter card:

An upgradable-ish SSD plugged into the Darth Pro over one of its GPUs.

Performance-wise, the move to PCIe-based internal storage as standard was really smart. Since SATA3 tops out at 600MBps, it’s soon going to be the weakest link as the next generation of SSDs start to push beyond that range. Considering that Apple uses fast Samsung SSDs as standard in its laptops, I’m sure the company will slap a very fast SSD in the new Mac Pro. Expect companies like OWC to make Mac Pro-specific flash storage upgrades after the machine launches.

As far as the other technologies go, it’s clear that Apple is pulling out all the stops to make the Mac Pro a serious professional’s tool that won’t get dated any time soon. Which is good, because the stuff inside it better last...

A truly epic lack of expandability

Ask any Mac Pro users where “small size” sits on their list of workstation needs and they will tell you it's down at the bottom, squarely between “should make my bed in the morning” and “covered in fur.” The added desktop space will be nice to make room for those three shiny 4K displays that we can apparently afford, but “tiny” isn’t on my list of wants for a workstation. Fortunately for me, “rack-mountable” isn’t on there either, since cylindrical isn’t the most server-ready format.

But the small size creates a potential problem. Aside from the regressive lack of any easily accessible ports on the front of the machine, the new Mac Pro has some serious expandability issues.

Internal hard drives

I’m personally on the fence about this one and see it as more of a nuisance than a showstopper. Most professional video people use external RAID arrays for their video work, and the new Mac Pro’s six Thunderbolt 2 ports will provide more than enough expandability to accommodate them.

The back of the new Mac Pro—the panel formerly known as "the inside of your tower."

But I don’t do much video work, and the four internal drive bays of the existing Mac Pro enclosure became a comfy standard for me and my work. Anything more seems like too many—but zero extra drive bays is, to put it mildly, too few. Now I will be forced to replace my existing eSATA RAID enclosure since eSATA/Thunderbolt adapters are stupidly expensive and there are no PCI slots in the machine to accommodate an eSATA adapter card. Considering the still-high price of external Thunderbolt enclosures, the price of the Mac Pro better be reasonable, because it’s clear that many of us will be forced to take this route as well.

I think that Apple is doing two things with this approach to expandability: one, it hopes to light a fire under third-party Thunderbolt supporters the way it did with USB and the iMac. Two, it wants to drive a wedge between professional video on the Mac (still the standard, regardless of how many times you troll me) and video editing on the PC. Many tools that were once PCI-only have been moved to an external Thunderbolt enclosure, much like how audio cards for FireWire and USB became the norm in mobile music. I’m sure that Apple’s move with the Mac Pro was meant to help accelerate that trend so that the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro can share formerly PCI-based video hardware. For many devices, the 20Gbps bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2 will be fine for this purpose, but those will also cost more than a vanilla PCI card.

643 Reader Comments

it’s soon going to be the weakest link as the next generation of SSDs start to push beyond that range.

Then they better god damned get the storage capacities and price ranges in line with HDDs.

Because right now I'd sacrifice having to top out at 600MBps if it means I can grab a 3TB drive for $130.

AND unless the general masses are frakking doing server cluster heavy computing they really won't have a need for 1.2GBps throughput (which also defeats the purpose of having a computer that can handle that much horsepower w/o any storage options).

Kind of pointless if I can render video / 3D animation or massive PSD files if I have no place to store them - locally.

It looks amazing and I'm sure it will be well constructed, but it seems limited for a workstation. The top workstation offerings from dell and hp both offer dual cpu sockets, 4 times the memory and options for 3 graphics cards.

I don't have a Mac Pro, but it was least a decent machine, just getting a little date. This, on the other hand, doesn't look like a pro machine at all. Well, compared to a Dell Precision or HP Z-series.

It looks like a beautiful desktop computer, for people who want a lot of power.

The thing looks amazing, but I'm trying to imagine what it is going to look like in the real world, on a desk, surrounded by all the external devices you'll need with it, and tangled in the mess of cables that will connect it to those devices.

I really have to wonder about the cooling. This little cylinder could easily generate 400-500 Watts under load. It's going to have to suck a lot of air to manage that, and you don't move that much air quietly.

I don't have problems with the storage or the graphics, but the usb ports are a BIG issue. Four is, frankly, not even enough for peripherals. Currently I use six usb ports without even counting Hard Drives, a mouse, a keyboard, a secondary numpad, a usb d/a converter, a webcam and one for the phone/iPad. Having to use thunderbolt adapters means extra cost and cluttering cables.

I can't see how this won't overheat. I did some rough TDP calculations, and with dual 275W GPUs, dual Xeon class workstation CPUs, three thunderbolt controllers, and a bevy of other stuff, I can't see it coming in below 700W at load, and there's no way a single fan can easily cool all that.

Ask any Mac Pro users where “small size” sits on their list of workstation needs and they will tell you it's down at the bottom, squarely between “should make my bed in the morning” and “covered in fur.”

This, more then anything, is the crux for me. I wanted to sleep on it overnight and see if I felt differently after cooling down and really giving it some thought. Nope, I still hate this design, largely because I just can see absolutely no positive, affirmative argument for it. Having the machine be this small, as the only pro offering, just isn't valuable at all. In the thread discussing the new Mac Pro in the Mac Ach, we did have someone talk about how they really do carry an MP around all over the world on aircraft, and that the current one just barely makes. However, even in that rarified and extreme case, the need could have been met with a case half as big as the old one which still would be 4x the size of this and still allow at least a couple of standard PCIe slots, a decent number of 2.5" drive bays if nothing else, and 8 memory slots. It still would be a smaller, sexier and more portable system, while not utterly and completely gutting it. And that has even more knock-on effects, like creating a requirement for Thunderbolt 2 (more like TB 1.1), which in turn pushes out availability since the Falcon Ridge chipset is due to launch long after IVB-E becomes available (hopefully Apple got some sort of special deal here, otherwise we aren't seeing even this system until December).

For those who don't know, we were really close with the Mac Pro to having across-the-board It Just Works 3rd party graphics card support at long last too. Since around a year ago Nvidia in particular has been fantastic about supporting the Mac, and for 2008 or newer MPs it has been possible to just pop in a 400, 500 or 600 series card (within the limits of heat and power of course). The final missing piece was UEFI, the old Mac Pros used an outdated hybrid EFI 1.1, whereas the UEFI PC graphics cards starting to appear naturally use UEFI (as do Apple's newer non-MP systems). If that had been updated, then we really looking forward to an era of no more "Mac" graphics cards, but just being able to slot in anything. Having that snatched away at the last minute is yet another huge let down.

Pricing has the potential to at least mildly ease the pain, but not much, and even then I don't think the signs are at all hopeful. Apple's approach is fundamentally less efficient and there just isn't much if any cost savings from their design, if anything it's the opposite. Having to use bigger, few DIMMs for memory means paying a lot more money for the same thing. Having to use PCIe SSD internally means paying a lot more for the same thing and not being able to adapt as newer stuff comes out (and the SSD market is moving extremely rapidly right now). If Apple is offering a few normal cards it'd help, but at this point there is every reason to be pessimistic that they'll require workstation cards, charge workstation prices regardless of what deal they're getting privately and pocket the difference.

This really is like the Cube all over again, with the exception that last time everyone was able to just plump for a PowerMac whereas this time Apple seems to have decided the proper solution is to force everyone to get their little sculpture by making it the only offering. It's an answer to a question that no one was asking, and the epitome of form over function. If this was a $1k-$2k middle machine with an upgraded Mac Pro remaining then it'd actually be pretty exciting, but as the dedicated top level replacement it sucks. They've made it more expensive, and however small the main hub is a rat's nest of cables sprouting out from a hub to a bunch of extra boxes is not pretty or portable.

So to my true regret no, I just don't see any positives here. "As small as possible even to the extent of sacrificing core functionality" makes sense in other parts of Apple's lineup, a portable is mostly defined by, well, it's portability, and something like the Mac Mini can actively benefit also. But the best that anyone can argue (and lots of people did argue already) for this system is "well, you can sort of get close to most of the old functionality for a much higher price and in a much less elegant way." That's really too bad.

Question for the author - Why do you persist with using Mac Pro for your work given the numerous non-trivial compromises, complete lack upgradability & the huge price premium compared to PC? Is the Apple brand that important to you?

There's really not much of a price premium, if one exists at all, between the Mac Pro, HP Z-series, and Dell Precision desktops.

The new Mac Pro makes the previous generation look (thankfully) as outdated as it should, given that the machine it’s replacing uses technology from 2010.

Quote:

As far as the other technologies go, it’s clear that Apple is pulling out all the stops to make the Mac Pro a serious professional’s tool that won’t get dated any time soon. Which is good, because the stuff inside it better last...

Quote:

but having the same GPU for four years (typically how long I keep a Mac Pro) is not appealing.

The 4 USB 3.0 ports is unfortunately due to Intel's ridiculous idea of what is acceptable for a high end chipset in 2013.

Are we sure these are FirePro W9000's? Judging by Apple's specs, I'd say they're W8000's with 3GB VRAM per GPU. Apple says "Up to 7 teraflops of computing power," and, "up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM." I'm guessing that's for the whole system, not per GPU.

edit: Going back to the slide from the keynote, they do say 4096 SPs, so that'd be W9000 which does normally come with 6GB VRAM. Fully clocked, a pair of those should be closer to 8 TFLOPs though.

Also, Thunderbolt 2 is still limited by a PCIe 2.0 x4 back end, so it's still stuck at PCIe 2.0 x4 / 3.0 x2 bandwidth despite supporting up to 20 Gbit/s per link.

Question for the author - Why do you persist with using Mac Pro for your work given the numerous non-trivial compromises, complete lack upgradability & the huge price premium compared to PC? Is the Apple brand that important to you?

A lot of software options are Mac exclusive. Also, Mac OS is much better optimized for video/photo work. In Windows there's a confusing jumbo of color spaces for different software, Adobe software under-utilizes the graphics, but Mac have none of that.

Disclaimer. I use Windows for all my work, but if someone gave me a free copy of Final cut pro and Photoshop for Mac I'd seriously consider going to the dark side...

Ask any Mac Pro users where “small size” sits on their list of workstation needs and they will tell you it's down at the bottom, squarely between “should make my bed in the morning” and “covered in fur.”

This, more then anything, is the crux for me. I wanted to sleep on it overnight and see if I felt differently after cooling down and really giving it some thought. Nope, I still hate this design, largely because I just can see absolutely no positive, affirmative argument for it.

Subjective, but I really don't think so. Looks like a nice wastepaper basket, and more to the point I think good looks stem a lot from good function. The old Mac Pro really did need refinement and an update, but it still looked perfectly good and mostly did the job.

Question for the author - Why do you persist with using Mac Pro for your work given the numerous non-trivial compromises, complete lack upgradability & the huge price premium compared to PC? Is the Apple brand that important to you?

OS X is really nice. And if you've got a workflow built around that it's definitely painful to change, even ignoring software that won't be available elsewhere (either at all or in a particular combination). Hackintosh obviously has its own issues in terms of support and the like, though it's looking like that's the route Apple really wants a lot of people to go.

I don't have problems with the storage or the graphics, but the usb ports are a BIG issue. Four is, frankly, not even enough for peripherals. Currently I use six usb ports without even counting Hard Drives, a mouse, a keyboard, a secondary numpad, a usb d/a converter, a webcam and one for the phone/iPad. Having to use thunderbolt adapters means extra cost and cluttering cables.

...professional video on the Mac (still the standard, regardless of how many times you troll me) and video editing on the PC.

Say what you want, but the standard for any newsroom in the country is Avid NewsCutter, which won't even run under MacOS. Apple (and apparently the press) seems to believe they can still say "You'll do it our way, or you won't do it." It's why PC makers continue to eat their lunch. Five years ago, I would have agreed that they were the kings of media editing. I was one of them that said you needed a Mac to do any serious graphics work. Today, not so much.

I don't have problems with the storage or the graphics, but the usb ports are a BIG issue. Four is, frankly, not even enough for peripherals. Currently I use six usb ports without even counting Hard Drives, a mouse, a keyboard, a secondary numpad, a usb d/a converter, a webcam and one for the phone/iPad. Having to use thunderbolt adapters means extra cost and cluttering cables.

Edit: spelling

USB Hubs exist for a reason. You have heard of them, yes?

Well, yes, and...

Quote:

With such a limited amount of USB connections and internal expandability, the minimal profile of Apple’s new Mac Pro will be predictably mired by a clumsy caboose of USB hubs and Thunderbolt devices.

It's really hard to say whether this will succeed without knowing the price. At $2000, it's dead.

... it's a workstation.

Anyway, good writeup and covers what I think of it too. No mention of it being single CPU in the article? That was a letdown. I like the looks though, I really do. The more I look at it the more I like it. But I wouldn't say it's fitting for a workstation.

I don't have problems with the storage or the graphics, but the usb ports are a BIG issue. Four is, frankly, not even enough for peripherals. Currently I use six usb ports without even counting Hard Drives, a mouse, a keyboard, a secondary numpad, a usb d/a converter, a webcam and one for the phone/iPad. Having to use thunderbolt adapters means extra cost and cluttering cables.

Edit: spelling

USB Hubs exist for a reason. You have heard of them, yes?

Except that they're useless if you're planning to connect external drives or other power-intensive usb devices that don't play nice with hubs.